THE "LILY" AND THE "PRIMROSE."
"He shall only well known be
By the holy harmony
That his coming makes in thee."
--ANON.
It was in the dim twilight silence reigning about the mysterious dark
pools below the Craig Aran Peak, whither Percival Vere had followed
Primrose with eager feet to her well-known haunt, and on the brink of
the black lake round which he had first watched the slow-moving
footsteps of the immortal maiden, that on the evening of the day of
his conversation with Lady Bryn Afon he poured out his tale of love,
and heard from her sweet lips such shyly-answered confession, as made
the dying evening sunlight suddenly illume the landscape, to the eyes
of his dazzled vision, with all the golden glories of heaven. And
when, after much sweet converse in that vast solitude, and a solemn
mutual commending of themselves and their new-found joy into the
hands of God, they descended the steep hillside to Glyn Melen hand in
hand, their feet seemed to tread upon air for very lightness of
heart, and Primrose, creeping into her mother's arms in speechless
happiness, after they had together received her blessing, felt that
for her the world had verily been created anew, and that all dark
shadows had for ever rolled away from her long-dreaded future, in the
deep, abiding sense of joy and peace with which the knowledge of
Percival's love had filled her heart. Each day of the blissful weeks
that followed seemed only more happy than the last, as the souls of
the lovers grew more firmly knit together in a bond of love which,
like the rainbow to which Percival one day pointed on the
mountain-top, rested but one foot on earth, and hid the other in
heaven. Each day Shanno found in her Sir Galahad more of those
virtues and beautiful traits of character with which she had ever
clothed her ideal knight, and each day likewise he found her more
richly endowed with those tender graces and that innocence and purity
of heart which had so surely been revealed to him in that sweet,
haunting face of his midnight vision. Lady Bryn Afon, rejoicing
greatly in their happiness and in her own newly-found joy of
reconciliation with her father, who still remained with her, seemed
to grow younger and more beautiful day by day, and to renew her
failing health marvellously in the exhilarating air of the mountains,
and in the new sense of peace which filled her heart. And who so
radiant as old Jack the boatman, again restored to the love of one
whom he had so long mourned as dead, and looking forward when the
present short season of bliss should be ended, to having once more
the charge of his loved granddaughter during some portion of the
ensuing months? For Lady Bryn Afon must shortly rejoin her husband
in town, and the chaplain must resume his duties in the earl's
household, until, on the resignation of good old Master Rhys in the
following year, he should succeed, by Lord Bryn Afon's express
desire, to the living of Cwmfelin, the earl vowing that while in town
the guardianship of the faithful Rhiwallon was enough for him, and
that he had resolved henceforth, for the sake of his wife, to spend a
great part of his time in his old Welsh castle in spite of the
malediction upon its walls, during which seasons Percival should
continue to act as his chaplain in addition to his new duties. Such
plans for the future had the earl determined, bent upon the union of
his beloved chaplain with the Fair Maid of Gwynnon, and knowing well
Percival's secret desire to make the Gwynnon Vale some day the
starting-point of his own unwearied labours in the cause of
temperance and sobriety. And, all unaware the while of the strange
events which had lately come to pass within his own household, his
own ideas curiously furthered the development of those of his wife
and of the lovers themselves.
It was Lady Bryn Afon's desire, after much cogitation on the matter
and consultation with Rhiwallon previously held, that upon Percival's
appointment to Cwmfelin in the ensuing year, the earl should be
informed of his daughter's existence, and his consent obtained, as a
father, to her marriage with his chaplain, which he had so long
desired while ignorant of her birth, and to which his wife assured
the lovers he would raise no objection after the true state of the
case was made known to him. Her wish, further, was that the marriage
should then take place without delay, her express desire being that,
owing to the circumstances of the case, her daughter should be spared
the necessity or probability of spending any time beneath her
father's roof, which he would surely desire her to do, were any
interval permitted to elapse between the event of her being made
known to him as his daughter and her marriage.
"So soon as you are safely wedded and in a home of your own, sweet
one," she said to Primrose, "your relations with your father can
become both easy and pleasant. He purposes in the future to dwell
more than heretofore at Bryn Afon, and you will have frequent
opportunities of pleasing him with your society, and gratifying your
own filial affection, while at the same time such intercourse can be
fully controlled at the discretion of your beloved husband and our
faithful Rhiwallon. Your father will rejoice with all a fond
parent's love and pride in the possession of so fair a daughter and
in the knowledge of her happy settlement in life, and you will
likewise give to him a love and reverence which--alas, that a mother
should need utter such words to her child--you could scarce find so
easy were you dwelling beneath his own roof, ever in his company.
Seek not, sweet one, I pray you, to break this barrier, which a sad
fate has set up betwixt yourself and him. Such dealings with you
both seem hard and unnatural for a wife and mother to speak of thus
coldly, but are more necessary than you can deem possible. Bid her,
Percival, believe that her union with yourself will assuredly further
her father's true happiness far more than any immediate knowledge of
her relationship to himself could do, and she will rest content."
"Is it indeed so, Percival?" asked Primrose entreatingly. "May I
truly, as a daughter who would fain render all loving and dutiful
reverence to a father, thus contemplate my future happiness without
sin, and, unknown to him, and with my dear mother's consent only,
come to the very eve of my marriage, ere my existence may be revealed
to him? Sweet mother, you bid me appeal to him whom above all the
world I love and honour, and by his opinion I will be guided, nor
fear any thought of ill, an his true heart can safely bid me trust in
the hope you bid me cherish of my father's future consent to our
union; for fain would I have his blessing ere I enter upon that new
life, the thought of which at times o'erwhelms me in its promise of
bliss!" And hiding her face on her lover's shoulder, Primrose clung
to him, trembling.
"Believe me, sweetheart," he answered, "your mother's plan for us all
is well. The knowledge I share with her of that which blights your
father's life shows me clearly that were you now to share with him
that life in the close relationship of father and daughter, even for
the space of this one year only, which must needs elapse before our
marriage, you would but subject yourself to the dread influences
which your mother has given up her very life to avert from you, and
this without power to avert them from him who has long since been
their unhappy prey. Whereas by our marriage following immediately
upon your being presented to him as his daughter, and by our
beginning together that life in which I pray God I may have grace and
strength from Him to shield you from all ill, and from aught in your
intercourse with him which might prove harmful to you, your mother
and I both trust that no breath of evil influence shall e'er ensue
from those meetings with him from time to time, which it shall then
ever be our joy to promote between you. You, sweetheart, I trow,
will ever love me well enough to trust that I will never keep you
from your father's side when I know it safe and well for you to be
there? Already does the earl earnestly desire our union, in that
warm affection for us both of which I myself feel at all times too
unworthy; and I have but little doubt that were he at once to know
the truth concerning you, he would equally wish this longed-for
consummation of our love, to which he is pleased to accord so full a
sympathy. And the special joy which, in God's good providence, we
trust your father may live to see through this our marriage, is
this--that, subject to your consent, I have faithfully promised your
mother that in the glad event of our being blessed by God with a son,
he shall take the name of Bryn Afon, and so, should our lives and his
be spared, may hereafter, free from the curse of your forefathers,
carry on under fairer conditions the once-honoured name so nearly
brought to an untimely end, and build up the ancient house, now
crumbling to dust beneath Ap Gryffyth's curse, to take its former
place among the noble houses of our principality. So may I be
enabled, God willing, to wipe off, as in childhood I vowed I would
strain every nerve to do, that stain, which, through the malediction
of my own ancestor, has clung to so many long generations of yours!
Have I done right, sweet wife that is to be, to make such promise?"
"To me all that you do is right, my beloved," answered Primrose, her
eyes filling with tears of rare love and devotion, "and it is a right
noble promise you have made. Sweet mother, all shall be as you and
my affianced husband desire and know to be wise and good for me; and
since you do assure me I may look for my father's blessing on my
marriage morning, I am well content, and will ask no more, nor ever
seek to know the nature of this dread curse, which has caused you so
sorely to suffer, in order that it might be averted from me, save at
my husband's and your own bidding."
So, that sweet summer holiday ended, the lovers parted on the green
banks of the softly murmuring Gwynnon, beneath the boatman's bridge,
one sunny morning; and Lady Bryn Afon, commending her child for the
first time with her own lips into her father's care, took her
journey, in her chaplain's charge, to London, there to rejoin her
husband, at length able, in the depths of her heart, to rejoice that
her sufferings had surely not been in vain.
Percival Vere, on rejoining Lord Bryn Afon in town, made him as soon
as possible acquainted with his betrothal to the Fair Maid of
Gwynnon, and the two frequently conversed together on the subject of
her perfections, which topic offered a certain relief to her lover's
loneliness of spirit in his absence from her, and was also to the
earl, who had ever taken a lively interest in her fortunes, one of so
much interest, that he bade his chaplain to make no doubt of his
being himself present in person to witness the happy event whensoever
it might come to pass.
"'Twas a strangely opportune decision I made to appoint you as
successor to good old Master Rhys of Cwmfelin!" he remarked one day,
as they were conversing together after the evening meal; "for such
has long been my intention, so soon as our old friend should carry
out his contemplated resignation, apart from my desire to see you
happily wedded to her whom my mind had chosen as a fitting helpmeet
for your labours. 'Tis rarely we find our dreams verified, but when
I see you and your fair bride housed beneath the walls of yon ancient
monastery, I shall feel a sense of gratification in having realised
this one of my own! And as for you, can you but have free scope for
your own wild imaginings as to the total abolition of strong
beverages throughout the length and breadth of Wales, beginning, as
you so eagerly desire, with my own poor village and ill-starred
domains, you will, I doubt not, account yourself to be fulfilling a
far higher destiny than were I to seek for you favour in high places
and a pulpit here in our metropolis, whence you might enthral
thousands with your eloquence! Come now, I have but to whisper in
the king's ear, and your friend Jeremy in the ear of Archbishop Laud,
and you shall have such a sphere appointed you, as I verily confess,
would rather befit your learning and powers of oratory than yon tiny
village amid the wild Welsh hills!"
"I have no such ambition, my lord," answered the young chaplain
gravely. "My life is vowed to your service and to that country
which, though but in part my own, is wholly yours. I have no better
wish than to labour unknown among the wild Welsh hills, if in God's
mercy, by so doing, I may seek to diminish the woes appertaining to
your house. At Cwmfelin I can work not only to this immediate
effect, being still your chaplain, but for the good of that whole
neighbourhood wherein the rumour of the curse works mischievously,
and where, as you must needs confess, there is field enough for those
special preachings of mine, at which you are pleased to jest. An it
were better that I should confine myself wholly to the duties of my
chaplaincy, I am ready so to do, as you know, having so undertaken."
"Nay, that I will not," replied the earl; "for to hold a man of your
gifts and learning ever tied to mine own apron-string were to my
thinking an unpardonable selfishness. Yet such is the hold you have
upon my affections, that, as you see, I do not urge you to more
ambitious fields, but seek to hold you still by one end of the
string, in thus giving you the spiritual charge of my own estate, and
in placing you at my feet in the valley, so that, when, like all the
Bryn Afons, I come to die within mine own accursed walls, it shall be
your hands, and no stranger's, which shall minister to my dying
wants. And my dying bed, I warrant you, Percival, will be no
pleasant and peaceful scene, which you may bring your fair wife to
witness! As my forefathers have died, so too must I, and that I bid
you then not fail me is a sure proof of the trust I place in you, and
of my belief in your strangely conceived affection for me. I too
have a curious love for you, Percival, a love born out of pure
contradiction! 'Tis passing strange that I, of all men, should so
love you, with your everlasting hobby daily thrust down my unwilling
throat, and your pure pale face warranting you well enough to be the
'lily-knight' they call you, ever stealing with haunting eyes between
me and---- Ah well, when you are settled within the venerable walls
of your parsonage, you will have opportunities for preaching your
hobby, and can you but outlive good Master Jones of Puritanical
repute, I doubt not you will have the whole country-side speedily
imbued with your strange, new doctrine. 'Tis a pity Ap Gryffyth did
not likewise hold such! He might surely then, if it were but 'on
principle,' have spared me his imprecation! So the fair maid comes
to town in the winter with our Lady Rosamond? Beware, lest betwixt
that madcap's spoiling and the attentions of my infatuated wife, she
is not spoiled for service as a good country parson's wife! Well, I
give you both my blessing, such as it is worth--and there's my hand
on it!"
"It is worth more than you think, my lord," answered his chaplain
earnestly, and, grasping the carelessly-offered hand with a warmth
which touched the heart of the impulsive, light-hearted earl with a
keen sense of pleasure, he passed into his study.